No patient at Northern Westchester has been linked yet, but the health department is recommending that anyone who had surgery at the hospital between Oct. 8, 2007 and Feb. 28, 2008 to be tested for the disease.

how about adding into your commentary a bit about how health care access could help also. I can see the argument side of legalizing drugs etc, but without proper treatment available to all . . .

Some people need proper treatment, and until they can overcome their problem, they need safe alternatives. It seems to me, the drugs she was taking would be ones that need proper supervision, which I don't feel an addict can offer themselves.

You might want to add the word "a" before "NY Hospital" in your title since New York Hospital could get upset and patients who've been there could also be unnecessarily alarmed that they may have been exposed.

So many arguments on this issue take bizarre and unusual cases and reason about them as if they are the norm. In social research, that is called "creaming", or taking the select few cases which support your theory and pretending they are representative of most everybody. Arguments about the WOD -- either way -- which are based on the assumption she is a typical case are flawed. Some alcoholic, under some conditions just might have done such a thing as you suggest. Those conditions might include things such as intense, irrational, violent, absolute and nonsensical prohibition based in a history of lies, racism, myth, folklore, medical profiteering, and religious temperance morality. In fact, the history of alcohol prohibition is full of things just as bizarre as this case. People drank rubbing alcohol and methyl alcohol...and got sick or died! They devised incredible schemes to get alcohol or make it. They went to all lengths. They killed. They maimed. And they had collateral damage that would make this case look tame. Such behaviors in pursuit of alcohol are practically nonexistent today, because there is an easier way to get it. One need not kill anybody. The point is, I suspect most people categorized as "addicts" would not do what this person did. There is more to this case than "addiction", as several people have mentioned. "Addiction", as the term is typically used, tends to overlap with those other personality problems, like irresponsibility, dishonesty, and endangering others. But this case is a real outlier.

Without looking at the data, I am willing to wager that during any prohibition (WOD) the number of addicts who steal in order to support their habit makes the number of addicts who do not steal permitted substances statistically irrelevant.

what you are getting at squeaky, but based on your previous posts, I tend to agree! The WOD creates the damage. I believe that. The damage done by the drug alone is small compared to the damage done by the laws. There are many ways to support that, not to mention our little natural experiment in the early twentieth century with booze.

I have issues with the term "addict". The stereotypical "addict" is but a small part of the people harmed by drug laws. There are legitimate medical and health needs for substances that are severely curtailed and lead to ruinous legal complications for those who illegally obtain them. There are people who might habitually use drugs that don't fit the stereotype of the "addict", and won't behave like "addicts". There is wide variation in drug use and drug behavior. The "addict" who catches the public's attention is not, I think, the typical consumer of many drugs. The "addict" catches our attention specifically because of their irresponsible and dangerous behavior. There is little evidence that the "addict" personality is due to drugs. I would suggest most of those people have some personality problem that would manifest in some other way if drugs were not there. We don't talk about how all drivers are insane based on the behavior of the kid weaving through freeway traffic on a motorcycle at 120 mph. Nowhere near all people who might use drugs, even habitually, behave in desperate and dangerous ways.

I think that drug abuse is a problem, not drug use. Although, I have had several arguments with heroin addicts who held that it was the drug, not them. Hard to believe, though, as I know some who maintain casual use or are able to manage regular use without it ruining their life.

Slippery stuff. I tend to think that apart from the abusers you define there are genetic predispositions that make some more susceptible to addiction than others.

Many teens smoke three or four cigarettes a day and never get addicted, and many have a couple drinks every day but are not alcoholics. I do not think that this is just due to lack of personality problems.

cigarettes are a good comparison for the idea. Yes, some people habitually use some drugs and develop cravings that can be very powerful. And yes, it probably has something to do with genetic or biological disposition, or even perhaps diathesis-stress. But the consequences of that would be something like the consequences of smoking without the WOD. Some people die. Money is wasted. But that is lot different from what results in the current situation. The individual is totally and completely destroyed by the laws and their consequences. I wish some friends I know wouldn't smoke, but I don't think it would help to make them buy black market cigarettes for $300 a pack, and then give them 20 years in prison and destroy their lives. It wouldn't help any of us to do that. We would just have more human misery and more expense.

Being addicted to drugs is one thing. While it does not excuse stealing drugs from a hospital, it gives a reason - the desperation and need can drive people to do crazy things.

That being said, however, it took some foresight and planning to replace the vials with saline, which shows she knew what she was doing was wrong. And now her actions may have set off a chain of hundreds, if not thousands of people, becoming ill with a potentially life-threatening disease. These planned acts are truly reprehensible.

Sorry, the War on Drugs cannot be used to excuse every bad and illegal behavior done by members of our society.